Databases are useful tools for storing, organizing, and accessing data and information. A database stores data in data containers including records having one or more data fields. DataBase Management Systems (DBMSs) are often used by database users to control the storage, organization, and retrieval of data (fields, records, and files) in a database.
Typically, organizations create value through models that are organized into processes, which involve people, automated systems and interactions. Due to the complexity and intricacy of the network that manages these processes, it is a significant challenge for organizations to achieve high levels of efficiency. Since databases typically play an integral role in the automated systems that facilitate the interactions which organizations employ, much room exists for improvement in database technology and implementation.
As organizational practices advanced in the information age, organizations began to depend on increased information flow across the organizational structure and through the value chain to create value. The creation of value is an inevitable consequence of the efficient flow of information across an organization. Increasingly, organizations rely on automated systems to support a complex web of organizational processes, including E-mail, workflow management, collaboration, data access and application systems. Information Technology (IT) has evolved over the years to integrate innovative organizational administration techniques and provide for collaboration through workflow systems and organizational integration software, thus improving organizational efficiency. However, the conventional tools developed thus far fail to provide the level of efficiency demanded by organizations.
Another problem related to conventional technical solutions to organizational communications and management is a lack of feedback. Typically, the IT infrastructure adopted by organizations provides tools that deliver information to people. However, the conventional infrastructure does not offer tools that properly collect feedback and gather information from people about the information they receive or use. In other words, the conventional IT infrastructure sufficiently provides for the delivery of information to people but not the collection of information from people. There exists no set of IT tools that allows people to react to the information they receive and share useful information related to their reaction in a way that adds value to an organization.
The perception that people have about the information they receive is, in itself, valuable information that can be used in shaping the culture, efficiency and effectiveness of an organization. If employees are provided with timely feedback about their actions, they can react quickly to solve unperceived or unanticipated problems that result from their actions. This allows functional processes within an organization to rapidly adjust to new and changing conditions. Under conventional IT infrastructure, this sort of real-time feedback could only occur through informal and uncontrolled avenues.
In view of the short comings in information exchange and communication associated with conventional IT infrastructure and database systems, there remains a need for an improved system for providing employees with more effective communication tools that provide timely feedback about the information that permeates an organization.